Tension – Reach the Embassy on the Moon
The former crew members of ''Yamato honor the past and attempt to solve the mystery of their shared visions. Earth moves ahead with the launch of a wave motion fleet. A representative of the Garmillan ambassador secretly contacts Susumu Kodai. As researchers on Earth learn more about how dangerous their new enemy can be, the Gatlantis Empire identifies the homeworld of humanity.'' Summary The Aftermath of Battle Following the recent battle against forces of the Gatlantis Empire, an unconscious Gatlantean soldier found in the wreckage of the battleship that nearly destroyed Earth's military headquarters is suspended inside a water-filled container and is monitored closely with medical equipment. The four human scientists observing him note the soldier's obvious strength and modified DNA, speculating that he is a synthetic being. One of the four asks his colleague, Kaoru Niimi, about her previous experience with the Gatlantis. Niimi remembers some relevant documents and leaves to retrieve them. At the same time, in the Great Garmillas Empire embassy on the Moon, military attaché Klaus Kiiman runs into the office of the Garmillan ambassador, Lorren Burrel, to inform him that the humans have a Gatlantean prisoner. The ambassador demands that they stop immediately. In the laboratory on Earth, the prisoner's body suddenly begins putting out massive amounts of energy that build into an explosion, obliterating the lab and several floors of the building in which it is located. : Niimi eventually regains consciousness, bandaged and lying in a hospital bed. On the other side of a curtain next to the bed, Shiro Sanada sits waiting. : Across a stretch of water some distance away from the city where the laboratory was located, crowds are gathered to celebrate the completion of the next four ''Andromeda'' class ships. The president of the Earth Federation addresses the crowd about the alliance between Earth and Garmillas, and among the dignitaries, Kiiman and Burrel sit next to United Nations Cosmo Force General Kotetsu Serizawa and UNCF Director Heikuro Todo. The four men mostly gaze straight ahead, never making eye contact. Burrel asks why the Garmillas were never told that the UNCF had a Gatlantis prisoner, and Todo responds by asking why the Earth Federation was not informed before their joint operation against the Gatlantis that their soldiers could self-destruct. The general points out that the Garmillas Empire could easily mount an invasion if they were so motivated. Burrel warns them against paranoid thinking. He goes on to point out that Earth broke its promise to Queen Starsha Iscandar to never build wave motion weapons again. Serizawa clarifies that it was not a treaty between two governments, but merely a verbal agreement made by Captain Juzo Okita on his own. As the ambassador falls into a grim silence, the crowd cheers the four new warships launching across the water and straight up along giant rails, rising into the bright sky, and warping away. Keyman and Burrel sit in the back of a car after the ceremony and review surveillance photos of the former crew members of Yamato. They believe that each of them heard Teresa's telepathic message, but they are not certain of it. What is certain, though, is that the Earth government is aware that something unusual happened to the those who had served aboard Yamato and is now using agents to follow them. Burrel wants to talk to at least one of them before information leaks from the Garmillas homeworld; anything having to do with Teresa is not to be taken lightly. They pause to examine a photo of Lieutenant Susumu Kodai. Burrel feels that he would be useful. Reunions Kodai sits before a panel of investigators in the UN Cosmo Force's spacious--but mostly empty--Grand Court of Inquiry, answering questions about his actions during the previous battle with the Gatlantis. After Kodai is dismissed, he is greeted outside by Lieutenant Yuki Mori. The two of them drive in a convertible beyond the city and into the countryside, a mix of green vegetation and barren rock still bearing craters from the Garmillas bombardment of Earth. Kodai tells Mori that the investigators were upset, despite the fact that his actions saved the planet. Mori shouts into the wind that he saved Earth twice and that she was personally worried. Kodai takes his turn and shouts his apology to Mori. They both break into laughter as they approach another city. In a café booth, they chat about their impending marriage and Mori's amnesia--a wife with only four years of memories to share. Kodai has a sudden flash of the vision of Okita sent to him by Teresa, and he earnestly proclaims that because of the difficulty that they endured during their mission to save Earth, it is their duty to be happy. Mori takes a hold of Kodai's hand, and says that she is already happy. : Watching the late afternoon sun, Doctor Sakezo Sado sits with his cat Mi-Kun underneath a tall statue of Juzo Okita in a public park, and pours a saucer of sake for his late captain on the third anniversary of his passing. Between gulps of sake directly from the bottle, Sado expresses his misgivings about Earth’s new wave motion-armed warships. He wonders aloud if no one remembers the sacrifices made by the Yamato crew. At that moment, a number of former crew members of Yamato converge on the statue, most in uniform and one bearing a memorial wreath. Lieutenant Daisuke Shima tells Kodai how word of his actions in battle have inspired others in the fleet. With his mood brightened, Sado leads his comrades in saluting Okita and assuring him that Earth is in their capable hands. The crew chat and drink together into the night. Sanada eventually finds Kodai, and informs him that at the same time as their vision, a solar system-wide communications outage took place. Kodai admits that Okita was in his vision. Shima overhears and says that he saw his father, and the other officers have similar stories of seeing fathers and other people from their own pasts. Sanada reports that the military is investigating. Nanbu becomes upset at this new investigation, the fleet of wave motion ships that Earth was never supposed to have, and more—not the world that Yamato was intended to create. Mori steps aside from the group. Kodai finds her and asks who she saw. Unlike her comrades, she saw no one. At that moment, a strong winds blows through the park. The new battleship Andromeda, illuminated by its running lights, makes a slow flyover. The officers’ mood turns glum, and Nanbu rises to yell at this new symbol of Earth’s growing military might. No one notices the young man in a hat watching them from a car parked in the darkness. The Search for Answers The following morning, Shima and Kodai join Sanada in his laboratory and examine a long distance astronomical image of a large quasar-like object that resembles a comet. It is moving near light speed toward Earth, but Sanada assures them that the object will not reach Earth for tens of thousands of years. Of greater importance is that the telepathic signal received by the Yamato crew traveled in nearly the same direction that the new quasar is moving. Sanada activates a hologram representing data on the signal recorded by Yamato's sensors that he managed to recover before military investigators could seize it. A light explodes into brightness and resolves into the image of a kneeling woman with long blond hair, hands clenched as if in prayer and calling on Yamato to help her. Kodai is convinced that the crew of Yamato must respond and travel to the source of the message. Sanada concurs, but Shima demurs. He points out that the reasons they have for taking on such a mission are not strong enough, and that the top commanders will show them the same inflexible attitude that convinced Shima to retire from the military. : Kodai drives the convertible alone at night, with Shima's words replaying in his thoughts. As his car enters an abandoned underground city, he fails to notice a car following him at a distance. He comes to a stop at the former headquarters of the Far East Command and enters the command center, its work stations dark and covered in plastic. He suddenly hears voices and ducks into hiding, and sees four government security officers in black suits tracking his movements. From behind Kodai, the young man who had been observing the Yamato officers' memorial quietly leads him away and outside the building, to an abandoned upper floor construction area. As they watch the security team fan out at street level below, Kodai asks the man who he is. He lifts his arm, turns a metal band on his wrist, and his hand flickers and becomes blue--a Garmillan disguised with human skin coloring and clothes. Klaus Kiiman tells Kodai that he wants to repay the debt that empire owes the Yamato crew for saving the Garmillan homeworld. He invites Kodai to the empire's embassy. : Far above the Moon, seven Cosmo Navy fighters are flying in mock combat. Ensign Akira Yamamoto, at the controls of a powerful and highly maneuverable prototype fighter, manages to evade the rookie pilots chasing their instructor in Cosmo Tiger IIs. Yamamoto avoids one more simulated hit by Jiro Tsurumi, and orders the squadron home. As the fighters fly over a large dedicated medical center built inside a crater, the pilots talk about the absence of their commanding officer, Lieutenant Saburo Kato, who is in the medical center with his wife Makoto watching over their young son and his struggle with Planet Bomb Syndrome. Yamamoto is changing out of her flight suit when she receives a private message from Kodai. A short time later, the cargo vessel Kisaragi[http://yamato2202.net/character_mechanic/ Official Space Battleship Yamato 2202 website character data for Kenjiro Ota] commanded by Ensign Kenjiro Ota sounds a false fire alarm and ejects cargo containers toward the Moon. One of the containers opens as is falls, revealing a reconnaissance plane flown by Kodai that quickly accelerates over the lunar surface. Several Garmillas counter-terrorist drones emerge from hiding and give chase, just as Kiiman warned him. Kodai is unable to shake the pursuing drones, but Yamamoto's Cosmo Tiger 1 suddenly appears and takes them out. As Kodai's plane dives into a crevice, Yamamoto radios her apologies for an accidental incursion into Garmillan space before pulling away. Kodai flies out of the crevice and continues toward the embassy. : Thousands of light years away in his throne room, the Gatlantis emperor Zworder receives a report from Prime Minister Shifual Sabera: the battleship that disappeared during the recent battle was able to track down the homeworld of the species fighting alongside Garmillas. Zworder smiles. Sabera orders the massive Gatlantean comet-like phenomenon away from the recently conquered world of Terezart and toward the planet Earth. Analysis *The gathering of Yamato crew members occurs on the third anniversary of Okita's death, which was shown in "Memories of the Blue Planet" just a few minutes before Yamato landed on Earth and restored life on the planet. An official "newspaper from the future" distributed during the theatrical run of the first two episodes of Yamato 2202 dated December 9, 2202[http://ourstarblazers.com/vault/173a/ "Festive Launch Ceremony," Yamato 2202 Newspaper, February 24, 2017] also places the launch ceremony on December 8 of that year. *As the Garmillas and Earth officials talk during the launch ceremony, Todo states that the population of Earth is less than one-third of its peak prior to the Garmillas-Earth War. Some humans would have left Earth in the three years since Yamato's return and others would have died of various causes, further contributing to the smaller population; on the other hand, birth rates would likely have increased once Earth's environment was cleaned and restored. Taking these factors into consideration, Todo's estimate is a reliable indicator of the human death toll caused by the war. *The four new Andromeda class ships are named Aldebaran, Apollo Norm, Achilles, and Antares. While Aldebaran and Achilles exactly match the battleship design of Andromeda, Apollo Norm and Antares are carrier variants that sacrifice firepower for fighter capacity. *Despite having friendly military and diplomatic relations, humans still harbor distrust of the Garmillas. Todo and Serizawa consider the Great Garmillas Empire to be a potential future threat, and a graffiti message reading "Gammies, get out!!" signals lingering hatred of the Garmillan people. *Kodai notes that hundreds of former Yamato crew members received the telepathic message, suggesting the total number that survived the voyage to Iscandar and back in 2199. Of those hundreds, only a small fraction attended the anniversary gathering for Okita. *Along with advances in other fields, Earth's astronomical technology seems to have improved since 2199. Sanada shows Shima and Kodai a quasar-like object resembling a comet. If this object is the large swirling cloud of destructive white energy that launches a Gatlantis attack against a planet in "[[AD 2202 - Revive, Space Battleship Yamato|AD 2202 - Revive, Space Battleship Yamato]]," and if it arrives a short time before the main events of that episode and this one, this would mean that information about it crosses more than ten thousand light years to reach Earth in only weeks, or days, or even less. This suggests that humans can now do astronomy faster than the speed of light. In the episode "Wish Upon a Star," Yamato used a telescope that was limited to the speed of light; from a distance of more than eight light years, it gave the crew an image of Earth as it appeared more than eight years earlier and not as it appeared at that time. *Zworder uses the word "Earth" instead of the Garmillas word "Terron," as Gatlanteans had done in Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Odyssey of the Celestial Ark. Questions *Why is the Garmillas embassy located on the Moon and not on Earth? *Why was Yuki Mori excluded from Teresa's message? Noteworthy Dialogue *''A hologram of data gathered on Teresa's message to the Yamato crew re-forms into the image and voice of Teresa herself:'' ::Teresa: Warriors of a distant star, my hope now rests with you. Behind the Scenes *Sports and casual clothing manufacturer Under Armour is a corporate sponsor of Space Battleship Yamato 2202.Scott Green, "'Space Battleship Yamato 2202' Teaser Published With Plans For Sci-Fi Sequel," Crunchyroll, September 5, 2016 In this episode, Under Armor makes its first on-screen appearances in the series; the logo is visible on a wing of Yamamoto's Cosmo Tiger 1 fighter and on a communications device woven into the fabric of her flight suit. Cast (Alphabetized by family name)[https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=18939 Anime News Network article on Space Battleship Yamato 2202] *Kenji Akabane as Yasuo Nanbu *Yuuki Chiba as Kenjiro Ota *Shigeru Chiba as Sakezo Sado *Kento Fujinuma as Researcher A *Tessho Genda as Kotetsu Serizawa *Aya Hisakawa as Kaoru Niimi *Yuko Kaida as Shifual Sabera *Hiroshi Kamiya as Klaus Kiiman *Sayaka Kanda as Teresa *Toshihiko Kojima as Heikuro Todo *Masato Kokubun as Yoshikazu Aihara *Keisuke Koumoto as Jiro Tsurumi *Houko Kuwashima as Yuki Mori *Yuji Mikimoto as President of the Earth Federation *Takamasa Mogi as Researcher B *Mugihito as Hikozaemon Tokugawa *Houchu Ohtsuka as Shiro Sanada *Daisuke Ono as Susumu Kodai *Takayuki Sugo as Juzo Okita *Kenichi Suzumura as Daisuke Shima *Rie Tanaka as Akira Yamamoto *Masaki Terasoma as Lorren Burrel *Hideaki Tezuka as Zworder References Category:Yamato 2202 episodes